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Students’ Right to Research

As a student trying to get this week’s assignments done, open access may seem only tangentially related to you and your education. Actually, it’s vitally important. And here are a few reasons why from the folks at The Right to Research Coalition:

The current system puts students from smaller schools at a disadvantage: due to the staggering price of journal subscriptions, not even the largest, most well-funded institutions can provide their students with the complete scholarly record. Students at smaller or less well-funded colleges and universities must make do with their fraction of access their library can afford. Students at community colleges, who are a significant portion of students in higher education, suffer even more severely.

Researching beyond the degree: many students, especially on the graduate level, pursue degrees in order to become qualified researchers. Whether they become professors, doctors, lawyers, or entrepreneurs, they will continuously rely on access to research in order to make an impact in their respective field. Yet, students’ access to journals expires along with their library card at graduation. If they take a job at another university, that institution may have a very different level of access than what they need, and if they take a job outside of the university setting, they will no longer have the library to provide them any access to journals.

These are just a few of the reasons; there are more worth considering. Take a few minutes today to learn why open access is important to you. Stop by the library, read the OA handouts, and enter our raffle to win gift certificates to Donna’s or Hannaford.